Undercover in Copper Lake. Marilyn Pappano
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was walking in circles around the worktable Sophy had made available for her and Dahlia, the rubber soles of her shoes squeaking every other step. Her ponytail had failed completely, the band hanging from a small clump of strands, ready to fall any moment. Pink from her strawberry milk rimmed her upper lip, while her lower lip was stuck out in major pout mode.
“What do you want to do this morning?” Sophy asked with a cheer that was mostly phony.
Daisy gave her a look that was mostly stony. “I want to go to school with Dahlia.”
“Besides that?”
“Nothing.” She gave her foot a little twist, intensifying the squeak against the wooden floor, then did it again.
“Stop that, please.”
Defiantly, she did it again.
Jaw clenched, Sophy turned to her own work area. In addition to selling fabrics and quilting supplies, she offered her own quilts for sale, taught classes, made custom pieces and machine-quilted tops for customers interested only in the piecing aspect. She always had a dozen or more projects in the works, and as Daisy continued the noise-making, she pulled out a plastic tub that contained one.
The piece was a twin-size quilt, creamy-hued pieces of fabric, plain or with tone-on-tone patterns so subtle she had to look twice at some to see them. It was a simple quilt, twelve-inch blocks with a scalloped edge. The beauty of this one was in the quilting, a meandering maze that led to a small outline-stitched heart. Though the long-arm quilting machine stood a few yards away, Sophy was finishing this one by hand because it was special.
It was for Dahlia, and maybe it would be with her when she someday found her heart’s desire. Please, God, let it be more worthy than her mother’s.
Daisy continued to wander, but the shop was a reasonably safe place to let her do that. The back door required a key to open the dead bolt. The stairs that had once led to the second floor ended at a blank wall and were used for display. There was a bell at the front door that chimed the instant anyone stepped on the floor mat, before they’d had a chance to even touch the door, and the windows were secured with extra locks.
As Sophy settled in, a sense of peace seeped through her. She loved every aspect of quilting, from choosing a pattern to assembling fabrics, cutting and piecing and quilting. To make her parents happy, she’d tried to major in business in college, dutifully attending classes at Clemson, stuffing dull facts she cared nothing about into her brain, giving up her social life and spending all her time studying. Quilting was the only other thing she made time for, and when one of her quilts won a major competition, she’d thrown in the business-major towel. Though there had been some lean times the first years the shop was open, she’d never regretted it.
Thanks to a Christmas gift from her sister, Miri, she wouldn’t have to worry about money for a long time.
When the bell dinged, she secured the needle in the fabric, then set the quilt on the worktable. Neither Daisy, too short to be seen over the stands of fabric bolts between them, nor the customer was visible from Sophy’s location, but clearly they could see each other as Daisy greeted the newcomer.
In a particularly Holigan sort of way.
“What are you doing here?”
Giving her chair a hip bump to slide it into place, Sophy hurried down the wide center aisle.
“Maybe I came to make a quilt.”
Sophy blinked. The voice was low and gravelly and definitely male, definitely not anyone she knew. It was the kind of voice that belonged on the radio in the middle of the night with a half-moon casting slivers of light across the bedroom floor while the half-open windows provided brief drafts of air cool enough to dry the skin. She would have recognized it if she’d heard it before. She would have dated this voice without caring a damn about the rest of him.
She saw Sophy first, head tilted back, hands on her hips, then another couple steps brought the man into view on the other side of a sampler hanging from the ceiling. She stopped suddenly.
She was wrong. She’d heard this voice before, a long time ago, and it had been Reba dating him. Her rebellious stage, Reba had later called it, designed to drive Mom and Dad insane. But Sophy had always thought her sister’s laugh when she said that seemed a tad wistful.
“Men don’t make quilts,” Daisy announced as if she actually knew.
Sean Holigan. Sophy had spent maybe a total of twenty minutes in his presence in all the time he and Reba had dated. She’d practically lived on the front porch swing back then, and he’d never been invited in while her parents tried to dissuade Reba from leaving the house with him. He had always leaned against the porch railing, smelling of cigarette smoke and heat and essence of bad boy, and he’d usually ignored her with her nose buried in a book.
Naive and just turned fourteen, she’d pretended to ignore him back, but deep inside, she’d been intrigued by him. It had broken her innocent little heart when he and Reba broke it off after less than a month. Soon after, he’d left Copper Lake, followed in the family tradition of going to jail, then disappeared from the radar.
And now he was back.
Not yet noticing her, he gazed down at Daisy, the resemblance so strong that anyone could see they were family. “Men can make quilts if they want to.”
“Nuh-uh. I’ve been here a long time, and I never seen one man makin’ a quilt.” Daisy’s vigorous headshake was the final straw for the band holding her hair. It flew loose, landing on the floor right between Sean’s scuffed boots. He bent to pick it up and, somewhere in the process, became aware of Sophy’s presence.
Slowly he stood, his gaze rising with the same easy fluidity. Her feminine ego wished she’d chosen prettier shoes, was glad she wore a dress that showed a lot of leg and hugged all her curves, and couldn’t help but shiver inside as he reached her face and his dark eyes turned smoky.
She’d bet her eyes were smoky, too. In fact, she was pretty sure steam was escaping wherever it could—her ears, the strands of her hair, the pores of her arms. The handsome teenage bad boy was all grown up, sinfully and wickedly, heart-stoppingly gorgeous. His black hair was a little too long, his jaw unshaven for a few days, his mouth quirked in a way that was part smile and part sardonic curl and totally sexy.
As he finished straightening, he stretched the hair band over the second and fourth fingers on his left hand. She couldn’t help but look at his hand, noticing the absence of a wedding ring first, the scars and crooked joints of the fingers second. He’d been one of the guys who’d hung out at Charlie’s Custom Rods back then, always messing with cars. That could be dangerous work. So could being a Holigan.
It finally penetrated her dazed brain that she should say something, but before she could find even one word, he spoke.
“If it isn’t little Sophy Marchand. You grew up.”
Heat bloomed in her cheeks, and her heart fluttered. Her fourteen-year-old self was dancing in circles: He noticed me! He remembered me! He knows my name! She was searching for the woman sharing space with the girl—she didn’t want to act like a flustered kid—and thought she managed a reasonable substitute. “Sean Holigan. I didn’t know you were back in town.”
A blur somewhere on her left, Daisy said, “Hey, that’s me and Dahlia’s name, too. We’re hooligans. We like to run wild and break rules. Do you run wild, too?”
Aw, Sean Holigan embodied wild and rule breaking.
That quirk touched his mouth again. “Me? Do I look wild?”
Daisy’s gaze narrowed as she studied him. “Yup,” she concluded. “You got long hair and a beard.”
“Nah, anyone can grow hair and a beard. It takes more than that to be a Holigan. Your mama doesn’t have a beard yet, does she?” He pretended to scrutinize Daisy’s jaw. “Though it looks like yours is about to come in. There’s a tiny hair here and another over there.”